Misty Rainforest | Illustration by Sam Burleyįetch lands are expensive because of their wide use across formats and their relatively low number of printings. Money Talks: Why Are Fetch Lands So Expensive? If you want a pro’s opinion on how to build a mana base in a format like Modern, Reid Duke has a course that touches on this. the chance of drawing an extra land you don’t need. Sometimes you’ll need to consider the cost of paying one additional life vs. The benefit is marginal, but Magic is a game of small decisions. Some players argue that deck-thinning isn’t a solid strategy and is generally useless, but there’s still a good amount of people who use fetch lands to get the mana base they want quickly and reduce their chances of drawing additional lands. Fetch lands help your deck become more versatile by giving you access to more cards across colors. People tend to use multiple colors while building decks in these formats (even more so than in Standard). Every deck needs to take multiple win conditions into account in these formats because of their variation. Non-standard formats like Modern, Legacy, Vintage, Commander, and Cube where people have access to more cards find them particularly useful. They can simply be used for better mana in some decks while other decks rely on them to work. There are multiple uses of fetch lands in theory, but how useful are they in practice? Naturally, it depends on your game style. Fetch Lands in Modern, Legacy, Commander, Cube and More Landfall Triggersįinally, you can also trigger “landfall” effects multiple times by using fetch lands and then putting another land on the battlefield, which can help you quickly pile up a massive advantage. Combine this with a couple scrying cards and you’ll have greater control over your draws. You’ll shuffle and get rid of the useless cards. If you have cards in your hand that won’t be useful in the next couple of turns, you can cast Brainstorm, put the cards you don’t want on the top of your library, and then fetch a land. Let’s say you’re using Brainstorm, which allows you to draw three cards and put two on top of your library. There’s also the “shuffle” effect, which can come in handy. The fetch lands don’t specify if what they fetch enters tapped or untapped, so that’s up to the fetched card’s conditions. Quick note: You’d still have to pay the two life to have shocklands enter untapped, as their ETB condition still applies. You could also grab Watery Grave, Temple Garden, Godless Shrine, Steam Vents, Sacred Foundry, or Breeding Pool, as each has either Plains or Island as a basic land type. You’ll probably notice that Flooded Strand says “Land,” Hallowed Fountain reads “Lands – Plains Island,” and the Island says “Basic Land – Island.”īecause Flooded Strand allows you to search your library for a Plains or an Island and doesn’t specify basic or nonbasic, you could grab an Island or you could grab the Hallowed Fountain shockland, since it has Plains and Island as its subtypes. Take a look at these lands, specifically their type line between the illustration and text box: Bonus!īuy on Amazon What’s the Big Deal? Why Are Fetch Lands So Good?įetch lands are incredibly good because they fix your mana, can get basic or dual lands, provide a shuffle effect, and generate two landfall triggers. Oh, and the land you fetch comes into play untapped, too. They also each align with one of the allied color pairs and can only fetch you a land from its pair. Unlike Mirage’s “slow fetch” lands, these come into play untapped and you need to pay one life to sacrifice them and fetch your land. The Onslaught set was released in 2002 and brought the first five fetch lands with it: Windswept Heath, Flooded Strand, Polluted Delta, Bloodstained Mire, and Wooded Foothills. Here’s the list of what are now known as “the fetch lands”: You can also search for a nonbasic land, but more on that later.įetch lands were originally printed in Onslaught and Zendikar: Full List of Fetch Lands What Is a Fetch Land?Ī fetch land is a nonbasic land that you can pay one life and sacrifice to search your library for a particular basic land type and put it into play. We’ve talked about shock lands before, and now it’s time to talk about another useful way to smooth out your mana. One of the most powerful ways to do this is with fetch lands. Finding a good balance of lands is crucial to any deck. Sometimes you get too few (mana screw) and sometimes you get too many (mana flood). To this day, I’ve never met an MTG player who’s never gotten screwed by a bad land draw. Verdant Catacombs | Illustration by Alayna Danner
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